The New Orleans police officer who burned a car containing the body of Henry Glover, who was shot to death in the days after Hurricane Katrina, said he made a "terrible mistake."

Lt. Gregory McRae testified Tuesday in the federal trial, in which he and Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann are accused of destroying evidence by burning the car with 31-year-old Glover inside. Former Officer David Warren is accused of killing Glover, and former Lt. Robert Italiano and Lt. Travis McCabe are charged with obstructing the federal probe.

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When questioned by prosecutors Tuesday, McRae admitted burning the body after his police captain told him to get the car and Glover's body "out of here," away from the school in Algiers where police were stationed.

"I made a terrible mistake, sir. I burned a corpse," said McRae. "When I left the school, I made that decision."

McRae testified that and Scheuermann drove the car to the Patterson Street levee, where McRae lit a flare and threw it onto the passenger seat and closed the door. When he walked back up the levee, he saw Scheuermann and noticed that the car was not yet burning. That's when McRae fired a shot into the car, he testified.

"There was no reason to assist me," McRae said of Scheuermann. "I know what I was doing. I knew what I did."

McRae also said that when Glover's body arrived at Habans Elementary School, he did not know Glover had been shot by another police officer.

"The car was meaningless to me. It was not useful," McRae said. "It had a corpse in it. It had no gas in it."

Capt. Jeffrey Winn, the commanding officer who told McRae to remove the car and body, also testified Tuesday. He said he did ask McRae to move the car because he didn't want a "decomposing body in my parking lot," because officers were living and working at the school.

"I'm the guy that made the decision on what do with the body," Winn said.

But he said he did not tell McRae to burn the body. He said he only instructed McRae to move the car to the other side of the levee.

Winn said he checked Glover's pulse and could not find one, but he did not notice the gunshot wound in Glover's chest.